An Eee pc, English?

Technology is a demanding mistress, and I usually don’t have the desire or funds to keep up with every new gizmo.Â On occasion, though, temptation overpowers rationality, and I buy a new toy.Â In case you haven’t figured it out from the title, I broke down and bought an Asus Eee PC.

For two-hundred eleven hard-earned dollars, I walked out of Best Buy feeling quite uncertain about whether or not I would be able to handle the dwarfish keyboard and spartan design.Â Oh how wrong I was.

It may not be natural to love a computer, but this is as close to man-machine love as I’m likely to get.Â It’s light as a 2-pound feather, has a very bright screen, and a keyboard that make you feel like your hands are enormous.Â Fortunately, typing on it for about 20 minutes improved the experience dramatically, and I now I have very few typoesq.

I installed Ubuntu (via Easy Peasy) and found it to be much more useful than the standard Eee PC operating system.Â I played with it as long as I could, and then had to go to bed.

I woke up Friday to the promise of a day filled with cabinet shopping (it’s easier to just embrace it than fight it).Â Some folks go to Lowe’s or a kitchen store for their cabinet needs; I go to cabinet Mecca: the Amish country.Â It’s about a two-hour drive across Illinois to get there, and I wasn’t entirely confident I knew the way.Â I fired up my Eee, plotted the route on Google maps and saved the instructions.

As april and I arrived in Arthur, IL, I pulled out the Eee to consult my map.Â Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure of the address of the particular store we were going to visit, so I just got directions to Arthur, which we easily found.Â The store was a bit more difficult to locate, but I was thrilled by the sight of the petit Eee set against the backdrop of horse-drawn buggies and bearded men eyeing us disapprovingly.

I can’t be sure it was the first netbook the Amish ever encountered (maybe they make their own?), but it was certainly the coolest.

We finally found the store, where Gram and Grampy were waiting patiently for us.Â Sadly, we didn’t find any cabinets, but I did enjoy a fair and balanced lunchtime debate with Gram.Â After Arthur, we headed back to Springfield, visited a few more cabinet places, and had a tasty dinner with my folks.Â After dinner, we discovered the most important feature of the Eee, one I was totally unaware of: Yahtzee.Â No more carrying around a cup and dice!

If you haven’t already rushed out to buy your Eee, do it now!Â I’ll wait.